Martin Luther King III attends a meeting hosted by United States President Joe Biden with organizers of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington at the White House on Monday, August 28, 2023

Photo by Chris Kleponis/UPI/Shutterstock

On August 28, 1963, The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew a quarter of a million people to the nation’s capital in order to protest racial discrimination and advocate for equal rights and opportunities for Black citizens. It is rightly considered a milestone in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and remains a perpetual source of inspiration and courage. It also led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which the U.S. Department of Labor describes as prohibiting “discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.”

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The Boondocks (S01E02) - The Trial of Robert Kelly

Shorts MaGee TV / Youtube.com

When Aaron McGruder's comic strip, The Boondocks, became an animated series, it changed television forever.

The show debuted in November of 2005 and was instantly a hit as part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim line-up. Black and white audiences watched every Sunday to see retiree Robert "Granddad" Freeman (voiced by John Witherspoon) and his grandsons, Huey and Riley (voiced by Regina King), and hear their thoughts on Black topics.

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Culture Feature

Jared Kushner Could Win a Nobel Prize, but BLM Deserves It

The Nobel Prize committee has the chance to signal a better future for a prize with a fraught past.

Jared Kushner, left, and Steve Bannon, right, arrive at a White House senior staff swearing in ceremony in the East Room of the White House, in Washington.

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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice — Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. "Letter From Birmingham Jail" 1963

Nominations have been announced for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Among notable nominees are Ivanka Trump's husband Jared Kushner, politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Depending on your political biases, you likely find at least one of those nominations offensive, though it should be noted that the list of nominees is long, and anyone can be nominated.

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Malcolm X, Black Muslim leader, addresses a rally in Harlem in New York City

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In February we celebrate Black History Month in America.

For the entire month, we commemorate the vast contributions from Black people who have impacted society here and abroad. After all, we are responsible for countless inventions and innovations in art, science, athletics, business, and activism, contributions that often get overlooked because of our country's pervasive legacy of racism.

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Culture Feature

Trump's 1776 Report Shows What Kind of "Unity" the GOP Wants

Erasing the reality of our troubled history — and our divided present — is not true unity.

Back in early September of 2020, when fewer than 200,000 Americans had yet died as a result of COVID-19, reality TV "businessman" Donald Trump was somehow the president of an entire country.

And he wanted everyone to "love" that country as much — and as selectively — as he did. So when Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project with The New York Times began winning awards and being taught in classrooms, he knew he had to act.

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Film Lists

Best Black Films from 2020 and 2021 to Watch on MLK Day

The renaissance of Black films acknowledge the past and look towards the future

Unfortunately, racism didn't end with Civil Rights.

But as we enter a new era of activism and protest, looking back at the Civil Rights Era can be both informative and inspirational.

The endless cinema on the civil rights era can, at this point, seem redundant. And while it's important to produce contemporary Black stories instead of confining Blackness to civil rights and slavery, it's also important to celebrate the social and political wins, prominent Black role models, and the profound impact of that era on our current landscape.

Prominent figures like Martin Luther King Jr have been endlessly mythologized in history books, on film, and in the American imagination. However, the movement cannot be distilled into the lives and work of one man.

To recognize his legacy is to attempt to understand the complex efforts for Black liberation that defined the civil rights era and continue today. This means everything from understanding the political and legislative barriers that gatekeep Black Americans from participating in democracy, to being introspective about our own socialization by a racist institution.

Martin Luther King Jr day is a reminder — this year more than ever after the call to action of 2020's protests, the election, and the white supremacist insurrection — that the work is never finished, and that it's important to live our values in everything we do.

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